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Tony Abbott this week grasped the rare and coveted political
prize of public favour.

It's an elusive trophy that he may not be interested in as he
grapples with his own personal anguish. But voters have perceived a
chink in the armour of one of John Howard's toughest warriors,
exposing his human side. Paradoxically, many now feel sorry for a
man who has shocked people with his strident views on personal
morality.

The Health Minister's distress was clear on Monday when he
acknowledged he was not the father of Daniel O'Connor. For 27 years
he had believed he and his former teenage girlfriend Kathy Donnelly
had given up their son Daniel up for adoption.

His raw emotion, impossible to disguise, evoked the sort of
sympathy that forgives and forgets contradiction. Jenny Scott, who
runs a support group for people like herself whose adopted children
seek their natural parents, said she felt sorry for Mr Abbott. And
that was despite her cynicism about such reunions.

"Politically I don't really like the man," she said, "but in
this case I do feel quite sorry for him, that this has happened to
him. For all those years he did think there was a son out there for
him."

The Liberal Party's former political strategist Graeme Morris
believes trying to engineer such sympathy is impossible. "It's a
personal matter and not for any personal advisers," Mr Morris
said.

More often than not the press gallery leaves private matters
alone, St James Ethics Centre executive director Simon Longstaff
says.

"To date, with one or two exceptions, the Australian media have
been remarkably restrained in terms of the gap between what they
know and what they report," Mr Longstaff said.

One of those was the affair between Cheryl Kernot and the ALP's
former foreign minister Gareth Evans. Nine Network correspondent
Laurie Oakes controversially revealed it because he claimed it
explained her defection to the ALP from the Democrats.

Mr Abbott is not the first to make himself vulnerable to
criticism of his personal life. But unlike other politicians whose
careers have perished as a result of personal scandals, Mr Abbott
has not offended contemporary morals.

A few decades ago, exposure of sex out of wedlock may have
resulted in disgrace - but not any more.

The vanquished Liberal MP Ross Cameron lost his seat of
Parramatta at the last poll because he committed adultery while
publicly moralising against it.

The hypocrisy was too much for his voters to bear.

But there are contradictions in Mr Abbott's own statements
before and since the publicity surrounding his own affair.

This week he explained the confusion surrounding Daniel's
paternity by saying: "You've got to remember, this was the 1970s.
We were all a bit wild back then."

The statement does not sit easily next to a landmark speech he
made against abortion last March.

"If half the effort were put into discouraging teenage
promiscuity as goes into preventing teenage speeding, there might
be fewer abortions, fewer traumatised young women and fewer
dysfunctional families," he had told heckling students in
Adelaide.

Mr Abbott's pain has also diverted attention from his own
oblique references to the abortion debate.

"It was my great relief that my son's attitude was not
resentment at being given up for adoption but gratitude at being
given his chance at life," he wrote.

The statement provoked feminist author Anne Summers to accuse
him of "cynical exploitation for political gain of matters that
ought to best have remained private".

That Mr Abbott was involved in a sexual relationship while
contemplating the priesthood has also been forgiven.